(audio version below)
Though I was not raised under any religion, I began praying at a very young age.
I would lie in bed and talk to my ceiling before I went to sleep. It was decorated with small glow-in-the-dark stars, so it had the effect of looking up into the vast universe. I mostly used the time to ask for things I wanted or to vent when I was in an unbearable preadolescent fit. It felt special, sacred even. Perhaps that’s why I never told anyone that I did it, not even my Christian friends.
Maybe if I had told them, they would have stopped trying to save me from eternal damnation.
Are You There, God?
I often went to church with my friends, curious about this Sunday ritual that it seemed all families but my own participated in. I attended Baptist services that were like circuses. I sat through Catholic masses as stale as communion wafers. I even convinced my parents to let me go to Bible camp at my best friend’s church where we made crafts that Jesus approved of, such as bricks of wet clay and straw, which the church leaders assured us was the same process the Jews used to build the pyramids when the pharaoh enslaved them.
I wanted so badly to accept God into my heart. Yet as I sat through all of these experiences that were supposed to be religious, I could not find the grace that was present as I lay in my bed and talked to the glowing universe above me.
A Direct Line
What I got from talking to my childhood ceiling that none of those church experiences gave me was a sense of true nourishment.
At church, the man on the pulpit spoke to me by way of a book that I had never read but was told held the word of God. But when I was alone, I had a direct line. It filled me up then just as it does now.
I’ve become so full that I’ve learned to make a life out of it. Every day I write and speak guided by this greater force. I see the way it feeds me and those I am able to reach. It is truly an honor that I will never take for granted.
But in spite of my gratitude, I see that we have a problem. I often teach that we must be able to name something in order to call it to us. Yet the right name for this nourishing force is a source of great debate.
More than a Name
It’s hard to know what to call this presence.
The word “god” either turns people off or conjures the idea of a judgmental white guy with a beard. Goddess is more interesting but still evokes a distant memory, like a character in a story. The universe? The divine? Spirit? All of it misses the mark by a hair.
That’s by design — this god thing is unfathomable. Unexplainable. Impossible to know. Infinite. Yet it is the awesome power animating our bodies.
This unfathomable force feeds us. It gives us the strength to work and makes us rest when we are tired. It lights up our desires and gives us obstacles in the way of achieving them. It draws us to fall in love with one person and ruin another person’s life. It’s true — our greatest source is a complicated one.
Which is why I refer to this thing as the Great Mama.
Our First Form
We first took form in our mothers’ wombs. She gave us her body during gestation and guided (or misguided) us in our lives. Her words are the ones we remember most — for better or worse. Her power is the one that ignites our own. All at once she is strength and weakness, wisdom and foolishness, sustenance and starvation. There’s no end to Her.
Calling her Mama untangles the idea that She is either all good or all evil. It allows Her to be everything, all at once. But most importantly, it does what we must do if we are going to build a relationship with this god thing — it gives it form.
The Great Mama is unfathomable but I know Her as I know my own body. I can call upon Her as a mama and offer myself to Her as a child. I can ask for Her by name, and She answers.
She nourishes me as only a mama can. She guides me to remember myself, as only a mama can. She gives and takes from me as only a mama can. It is just as easy to speak with her as it is to be in awe of her. That is a power worthy of devotion.
What Do You Call It?
The name you call this presence and the voice it uses to speak to you might be different from mine. I hope it is, because it means that you’ve tuned in to what’s in your heart. But I’ll admit it takes a while to create a relationship with a higher power. Some people go their whole lives not sure if they’ve ever found it. This is because we tell the story of meeting this presence backwards.
We hear a lot of stories about this presence coming to people. But that’s not how it works. Anyone who has ever talked to the great unfathomable has done the traveling themselves. We come to it, not the other way around. To know what you call it is the first step. The next is to know the voice it uses. The rest is simply listening and allowing yourself to be surprised.
If you don’t know what you want to call it, borrow from me or anyone else any term that makes your heart feel lighter. Try them all on until you find what speaks to you. Then allow that presence to carry you deeper and deeper into your personal exploration of the vast universe within you, even if your only reference point is a patch of glow-in-the-dark stars on your ceiling.
Om.
Journal prompts:
- Make a simple timeline of your relationship with this divine presence. Mark your earliest memories of its presence in your life up until now.
- What do you call it? What does that mean to you?
- What names are triggering to you? Why?
